The morning of the final day of Middlesex vs Worcestershire had the game turned on it's head as Daryl Mitchell approached Chris Rogers with the offer of a match. As a result Worcestershire declared on their overnight 45-2 and Middlesex forfeited their 2nd innings leaving Worcestershire with 283 to win from 96 overs.
Mitchell and Michael Klinger looked none to sure as they edged and played and missed their way to 21 before Klinger did what Dexter had the day before, leaving one that swung in this time from Murtagh and this time, LBW rather than bowled for 12. Mitchell then hacked to Dawid Malan at slip to fall for 9 in Murtagh's next over as 26-2 then became 35-4 as Andrew Strauss caught both Vikram Solanki and Moeen Ali off Gareth Berg and Toby Roland-Jones. The chase looked off, but Matt Pardoe and James Cameron showed some fight, as they took the score past 50 in the 24th over. But another wicket was bound to go, and it did, Pardoe edging Berg to John Simpson 14. Lunch then came with Worcestershire 73-5 and the question was now, could they last until tea?
Worcestershire's problem wasn't losing wickets occasionally, it was losing them in huge torrents, as was exemplified after lunch as first Cameron (30), Ben Scott (13) and David Lucas (3) all went in the space of 10 balls to Murtagh and Roland-Jones as they crashed to 96-8 with 60 overs left in the day. Aneesh Kapil and Richard Jones then went about hitting the total towards respectability as after some swinging and missing they picked up a couple of boundaries. Rogers then brought Malan on from the Nursery End and Steve Finn on from the Pavilion end. Jones tried to flog Malan out of the ground and was just missed by Rogers at deep mid-off and Berg at cover before swiping a flat six into the Grand Stand.
The plan seemed to be, Kapil plays out Finn, Jones targets Malan, and Jones brought up the 50 for the ninth wicket with the top edged slog which hung in the air before dropping over the short boundary to the Grand Stand just over the head of Finn. Kapil brought up the 150 with the first ball of the next over, giving Finn a shot at Jones. He needed just one ball, as the edge from Jones screamed low into the gully where Neil Dexter pulled off a stunning catch diving to his left to break the partnership on 54 with Jones top scoring with 32 off 33. The end was nigh, as Finn yorked Richarson 3rd ball, for a duck on his 37th birthday, as Middlesex pulled off an unlikely win by 132 runs, Kapil finishing 21 not out. Roland-Jones took 3-29, Murtagh 3-39, Berg 2-20 and Finn 2-30 as a solid team bowling effort gave the hosts 19 points for their 2nd win of the year as they rose to third in the table with Worcestershire's two points leaving them 2nd from bottom.
